Denis C. Bauer

Another fun little online game, Fantastic Contraption, was created by Colin Northway and is a physics puzzle game.  The objective is to move objects into a goal area by building a machine out of 5 components (wheels and connections). It can get quite challenging but most of the time you end up with a working but ugly machine by classic up-hill optimization More elegant machines that do the job can be admired by in the “Designs by other Users”-Section.

Synopsis

ToolTips in Java are handy to explain the function of a button or other component, however, describing the function in not even a sentence is sometimes pretty hard. Sure, you can provide a “help” document to supplement but finding the comment about this particular element sometimes just takes too. So wouldn’t it be ideal to combine both: a quick toolTip when you scroll over the element that is expandable to a full blown help document.

The ExpandableToolTip-Class I wrote does exactly this, it opens a toolTip-like popUp after 1.3s, which displays the ToolTip text and instructions how to open the “expanded” help-version if needed.

The expanded version of this contains a HTML page which can be scrolled through, marked and copied into the clipboard. Since it is HTML you can format it the way you want.

Usage

Usage of ExpandableToolTip is as easy as generating a new instance with the component, it should be attached to, and the help texts as arguments:

JButton element = new JButton("I'm a Button");
String tooTipText="Text for ToolTip";
String helpText="<p>Text for expanded toolTip</p>";
new ExpandableToolTip(tooTipText,helpText,element);

Download

You can download the class from here :

expandableToolTip.java

Comparing ToolTipExpander to other available classes:

I found other approaches, like the Multi-line ToolTip by Zafir Anjum, but non offered an expansion to a HTML page. The “function-info” in eclipse has the properties I wanted (a ToolTip-like one line explanation, which can be expanded by ‘Press F2 to focus’) but I could not find the source code for it and I doubt that it’ll be a one-class thing.

License

Expandable ToolTip by www.allPower.de is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Chronotron is a fun but challenging little online game created by Joe Rheaume. Use your time machine to interact with past versions of yourself in this puzzle/platformer! But beware of the PARADOX !

Go to this webpage to play the game http://scarybuggames.com/2008/05/chronotron/

We came across this excellent wine from the Barossa Valley :

I have developed a new bioinformatics tool called STREAM – Static Thermodynamic REgulAtory Model of transcription. STREAM is a application for researchers, who want to model the transcriptional regulation of a specific gene and predict its transcriptional output in different situations

STREAM is available as java .jar file and java source code upon request. I have also a blog about the development of STREAM, which informs about new versions of the program.

Links:

• Official STREAM page : http://www.bioinformatics.org.au/stream/
• Blog about STREAM : http://streamtr.blogspot.com/

When developing a program you don’t want to write everything from scratch. Hence, including other libraries becomes standard. The easiest way to make use of the external libraries is to include a jar file. However, when you want to distribute your program as a jar file yourself, those external libraries come back to bite you: It is not possible to export dependent jar files along with your classes into one jar file.

Now, you could extract the classes from the jar file of the external library to put them into your jar file, but in most cases those libraries have dependencies of their own, which come as — guess what — jar files. So it becomes futile to attempt to include all the classes manually. Doing this in a an automated fashion seems more applicable. However, even when using ANT files to build your project, you still need to generate a jar file from all this with correct MANIFEST.MF file. (See tutorial.)

If you are using eclipse then all the hard work can be done for you by one small plug-in called fat-jar. One click (literally) and your classes and all necessary jar files of external libraries are packed nicely into a jar file, the proper MANIFEST is written and the whole thing can be accessed as :

java -jar myApplication.jar

Via Bioinformatics Zen:


				

After 3 years of texture-less fluffy toast, it was about time to munch away on a slice of real bread again. However, due to the quarantine or simply because there is no market, it appears to be difficult to buy flower from other cereal crops than wheat. Even the numerous farmer’s markets do not have brown bread and if they do it is equally soft and fluffy as toast. So, we kept craving crusty brown bread until we discovered a rye-bread mix in the Sweden-shop at IKEA.

Yummy crunchy and truly satisfying – I can picture myself buying a whole shipload of bread-mix the next time I visit IKEA.

Fabian’s 30th birthday called for an exceptional experience. So we added another unforgettable holiday at a Peppers resort to our list: Peppers Spicers Peak.

Peppers Spicers Peak is a mountain-lodge style resort with only ten suites. It offers a unique blend of attention and privacy , which lets you relax and take in the beautiful surrounding it was built in.

It is situated on the mountain top, overlooking the other peaks of the scenic rim region. Up there you feel truly on top of the world. Especially in the steaming pool during sunset, while walking on the green thick grass of the plateau or in front of your very own lodge fire in your suite.

The stunning architecture of the building surrounded by nature and the luxurious bedrooms would have already been enough to guarantee a unforgettable holiday, but Peppers Spicers Peak has even more to offer: an exquisite and cockaigne-like dining experience.

Three course lunch and a decadent seven course dinner every day exposes you to a challenging variety of flavors and textures not only of the food itself but also from the matching wines. Nearly every course was a “lean back and embrace the unfolding flavors”-experience.

Some outstanding courses were:

• Smoked Trout & Wakame Salad, Soy Ginger Dressing
• Scallop Tortellini, Crisp Prosciutto, Soy Lime Beurre Blanc
• Sticky Date Pudding, Butterscotch Sauce
• Goats Gorgonzola, Oat Biscuit

Since the dining experience called for only excellent products, wine from my favorite winery, Golden Grove, was not missing.

Overall this holiday gave us an unforgettable exposure to fine dining, breathtaking nature and indulgence in luxury, which created memories for years to come.

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Fabian and I designed the poster for the Genome Informatics Workshop (GIW 2008) this year, which takes place 1-3 December at the Gold Coast, Australia.